The Dark Knight Rises

count this as a spoiler alert, even though i found the movie itself so devoid of content that “spoiler” is almost a joke.

i think my disappointment can be explained by how high my expectations were after the last batman movie. this movie did not make me care about any of its characters, and it did not make me believe in any of their motivations. where does that leave me? repetitive fight scenes and flashy fake futuristic vehicles. here are some more specific comments:

1. it was impossible to understand any dialogue from the two main characters. batman, with his billions and billions of dollars, doesn’t have a voice-disguiser more sophisticated than talking in an incomprehensible growl. bane’s face mask mixed in just enough static to make him sound like he wasn’t speaking english.

2. why were they driving around every day with the bomb? why not keep it somewhere undisclosed?

3. how does bane eat?

4. if the goal was to annihilate gotham, why twiddle around for 5 months? why was torturing batman important to any of the characters?

5. why was hopping from one ledge to the next necessary to get out of the jail-hole? there were foot/hand holds all the way up, and if a rope could be anchored where it was, couldn’t someone just be pulled up to that point using the first rope and install an anchoring point a foot or two up, then repeat until the top?

6. why did the other prisoners care enough about a kid escaping to tear off bane’s face?

7. why would the federal government believe that the trigger-holder in gotham would be aware if a single person escaped the city?

my main problem with this movie is that there was never a point at which i wanted to know what was going to happen next. the characters, motivations, plot and dialogue were all so weak that it just didn’t matter. i would rate this movie a don’t-even-bother-once-it’s-on-tv.